Follow Up: No sale planned for unused school building

Updated 6:15 am, Sunday, November 4, 2012

SCHENECTADY — The shuttered Oneida Middle School building will not be offered up for sale any time soon.

The city school district decided to close one of Schenectady's two middle schools last June to save $1.3 million in the annual budget.

At the time, talk swirled about neighboring Ellis Hospital purchasing the 89-year-old structure. The hospital, which openly expressed interest in the site, would likely tear it down and use the land for either parking or for a future expansion.

But the school district says there was never a decision made to sell the school, and that nothing will be done until a long-range planning committee finishes a report predicting future facility needs, school district spokeswoman Karen Corona said.

While the 600-some Oneida seventh and eighth graders were distributed between two elementary schools, two magnet schools and the remaining Mont Pleasant Middle School, the school district has struggled in the past to find space. Currently, the school district leases three former Catholic schools and uses them as elementary schools.

The school district did not say when the long-range planning report is expected to be done.

Meanwhile, there is no plan yet for another closed school, St. John the Evangelist on Union Street. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany has not decided yet what to do with the former elementary parochial school, which was closed in June because of declining enrollment. A proposed charter school in Schenectady, called Eximius Academy, has said it wants to locate in the former county Department of Social Services building on Nott Street.

ALBANY — A year after an overtime budget battle prompted the city to hire five new firefighters, department overtime is down 31 percent, the city budget director said.

With the Common Council last year resisting Mayor Jerry Jennings' call to increase fire department overtime for the second consecutive year, Jennings and lawmakers instead agreed to boost the department's ranks to 245 in hopes of cutting costs that way.

Through the end of October, the department had billed $1.4 million in overtime, down $667,717 over the same stretch the year before and on track to be within the department's $1.8 million overtime budget.

Last year's overtime spending in the fire department topped out just over $2.6 million.

"We've cut back everywhere we could. We're bare minimum now," Fire Chief Robert Forezzi said. "We try to use on-duty personnel whenever possible. The biggest part is hiring more firefighters."

Councilman Frank Commisso Jr., who has pushed for overtime savings in the past, noted that eight new civilian code inspectors were also hired this year and assumed the rental property inspection duties previously done by firefighters, presumably freeing them for other work.

Combined with the new firefighters, Commisso said you would expect to see the overtime costs drop.

Last year's dispute, which ultimately prompted the city's firefighters union to picket City Hall, began when Jennings asked lawmakers to increase fire overtime by $300,000 to $2.1 million in this year's budget, after doubling it in the 2011 budget to $1.8 million.

Some council members, upset at being asked to approve yet another increase, signaled they might not support it, prompting the Jennings administration to suggest rolling station closures, known as brownouts, would be necessary.

In the end, neither happened, with both sides instead agreeing to hire the new firefighters.